Alex Wickham
@alexwickham
Two remarkable lines in today’s papers from @Steven_Swinford @benrileysmith

— UK military left in the dark by the US about timings and pace of their withdrawal… UK official confirms this is the case
— Biden ignored Boris Johnson’s attempts to speak on the phone for 36+ hours //

Was Biden incapacitated? It’s not like this was a request from the president of Thailand. We are talking about our oldest and closest ally in the British. And Biden took almost two days to even return their phone call as Afghanistan descended into absolute chaos?

Further, the UK military was reportedly left completely in the dark about what the US was doing as far as pulling out. Timelines were not given, no preparations were made with NATO forces (which had more personnel on the ground than we did), and when the time came, pandemonium predictably broke out. Why was there no communication?

None of this makes any sense. As I asked yesterday, if Biden were trying to cause chaos in Afghanistan, what would he be doing differently? Is this incompetence or malice at this point? It’s hard to imagine a motive for the latter given this is going to hurt him politically, but we are at the junction where things are so haywire that all angles should be explored.

The United States is in a precarious position, disdained by our allies and unable to strike fear into our adversaries. Despite being assured that was going to be the result of Trump’s presidency by the same mediocre experts who never get anything right, the country came out of his four years stronger and more respected around the globe. It’s only taken seven months for Biden to tear all that down.